Pot-au-feu

As tradition built it

Serves 6. About 3 hours.

Ingredients

• 1 kg beef shin (gîte), for gelatinous body
• 1 kg beef chuck (paleron), for flavour
• 500 g beef cheek (joue), optional, for tenderness
• 3 carrots, halved
• 2 leeks
• 2 celery stalks
• 2 turnips
• 4 potatoes
• 1 onion, studded with 2 cloves
• 1 a bouquet garni

Method

1. Put the beef shin, chuck and cheek into a large pot of cold water, never hot. Bring very slowly to a bare simmer, never a rolling boil.
2. Skim constantly as scum rises, for as long as it keeps appearing. This is not optional; skip it and the broth stays cloudy and muddy-tasting.
3. Add the onion and bouquet garni. Simmer at a bare frémissement, a shiver rather than a boil, for 2 hours 30 minutes to 3 hours, until the meat is fully tender.
4. From roughly the halfway point, add the carrots, leeks and celery; simmer 45 minutes.
5. Add the turnips and potatoes only for the final 30 minutes, so they hold their shape.
6. Serve the broth first, then the meat and vegetables, with coarse salt, mustard and cornichons.

What a modern chef changes

Each cut cooked to its own optimum, then reassembled

Rung 3

Method

1. Cook each cut separately, sous vide, to the temperature that actually suits it. Shin, rich in collagen, wants a long, hot hold, 12 hours at 80°C, to break down fully. Cheek wants a gentler, shorter hold, 8 hours at 65°C, to stay tender rather than stringy. Cooking them together in one pot means compromising both; cooking them apart means each arrives at genuine optimum doneness.
2. Build the broth separately, using bones and trim, reduced hard, then clarified with an egg-white raft for real clarity rather than the traditionally cloudier, if still skimmed, home broth.
3. Reheat and plate individually, the vegetables cooked in the finished clarified broth rather than the pot the meat came from, so their colour and bite survive service rather than dulling over three hours of shared simmering.